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hamishmccat · 5 years

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Cold Snap

The cold snap that winter had hit London hard. The temperature had dipped well into the negatives. Politicians and climate change deniers were arguing about “global warming” not existing in the face of all this cold.

While the weather was the absolute talk of the town, a certain Soho bookseller was completely oblivious to the plunging temperature.

Aziraphale normally would have noticed, but yesterday Crowley had presented him with a particularly beautiful signed, first edition copy of Voltaire’s Candide. Aziraphale had begun a reread almost immediately, leaving Crowley to his own entertainment (napping on the backroom couch) for the evening. Unfortunately it was slow going. Despite knowing numerous languages, French had never been Aziraphale's strongest.

When Aziraphale got into his reading, he got a bit tunnel-visioned. He had eyes only for his literature. Being an ethereal being, he had the luxury of allowing the written word to consume him as long as he needed. He did not need to eat, breathe, or sleep. He did not feel cold if he was not paying attention to it. He could summon all the light he needed to read by without needing to switch on a lamp. He became oblivious to his surroundings. Therefore, he did not notice when there was a brief power cut caused the thermostat in the bookshop to turn off. He did not notice that after the power was restored, the thermostat would not turn back on without intervention. He did not notice the temperature dropping rapidly in the naturally drafty old bookshop. And he did not notice, from his perch at the front counter of the shop, that there was no longer the form of a demon sleeping on the backroom couch.

Aziraphale was broken from his literature-induced stupor by a sharp knock at the door. He was about to shout out that the shop was closed, when he looked up and realized the light in the shop had shifted. It was morning. The next morning. Anathema and Newt had been planning to come for a visit. With a quick flick of the wrist, the bookshop door unlocked and opened.

“Come in, come in, my dears.” Aziraphale called.

Anathema and Newt, decked in scarves, hats, gloves, and parkas entered, ready to be treated to the warmth of the usually cozy bookshop.

“Oh my! I think it is colder in here than outside!” exclaimed Anathema, her breath visible in the frigid air.

“Hmm?” Aziraphale, still coming out of his book daze, allowed himself to feel his surroundings and gasped.

“Oh! I...I didn't realize.” The only thought now occupying his mind was Crowley. Crowley had been in the shop when he started reading. Crowley hated when it was this cold. It made him sluggish at best. Had he left? He would usually rouse Aziraphale out of his reading enough to make his goodbyes.

Aziraphale reached out, trying to feel if the demon was near. He was. He was still in the shop. Aziraphale's eyes darted to the backroom couch, but it was empty.

“Where? Where did you go? You're here, but…” Aziraphale began muttering.

Anathema and Newt, still bundled, looked on as the angel began scurrying about the shop, mumbling to himself.

“What are you looking for? We could help you lo…” Newt was offering helpfully when he was cut off by a relieved “Ahhhhhhh!” from Aziraphale.

The angel had come to a halt in front of a mass of tartan blankets bundled up in front of an old hearth in the backroom. There had been a roaring fire in it last night, but it had burned itself down to barely an ember. Aziraphale knelt down in front of the bundle and gently lifted the fabric, revealing the head and tightly coiled body of a giant red bellied black snake.

Newt and Anathema watched opened-mouthed as Aziraphale gently stroked the head of the snake.

“Oh, love, I'm so sorry. I had no idea how cold it had gotten.” The snake drowsily opened its eyes and stared at Aziraphale. “You were asleep when it got so cold, weren't you?” The snake nodded. “Natural instincts kicked in, eh, my dear?” Another lazy nod.

“Come on then, let's get you warm.” Aziraphale held his palm out, just under the snake’s chin. The snake coiled its way up Aziraphale's arm, over his shoulders, around his torso, finally settling with its head nuzzled in the angel's neck, body coiled all around his shoulders and middle, and tail wrapped around his leg. The weight of the large creature didn't seem to phase Aziraphale in the least as he nimbly stood up and snapped his finger at the hearth, causing a roaring blaze to spark to life. He also snapped the thermostat back into business.

“Um...aren't those snakes venomous?” Asked Newt.

“Oh, rather,” was the calm reply from Aziraphale as he carefully settled into his armchair which he moved as close to the hearth as possible. The snake seemed to perk up in the presence of the heat. Its golden yellow eyes were now open and alert and following the conversation.

“And...and you keep one? As a pet?” Asked Newt, incredulously.

The snake hissed in response. Aziraphale scoffed and coughed. He seemed to be trying to hold back a full laugh. He scratched under the snake’s chin with affection. “I would never call him that. He would bite me if I did. Anathema, can you be a dear and hand me that coffee mug?”

Anathema picked up the black winged mug from the side table, the mirror twin of Aziraphale’s favorite, and handed it to him. The black coffee had been sitting since last night and had become ice cold. Aziraphale took the mug in both hands and focused on it. In a few seconds, steam began to rise from the dark beverage.

“Here, my dear, this should help.” He held the mug up to the snake’s head at his shoulder. The snake dipped his head into the mug and began to drink.

Newt really should have been used to all these unearthly occurrences. After all, it had been 6 months since Dooms Didn't, but the image of a large snake, wrapped around this innocuous-looking bookseller, drinking black coffee from a mug just did not compute in Newt’s oh so human brain.

Anathema’s witch brain on the other hand could see the aura of the snake and recognized it. That witch brain of hers was also remembering Aziraphale's words on the Tadfield airbase and connections clicked into place. Ah, okay, so, in the beginning, in the Garden, there was, well, he was a wily old serpent and I was technically on apple tree duty…

“Is he going to be okay?” She asked Aziraphale.

“Oh, yes, just got a bit cold. In fact, he should be fine now. He's just being melodramatic at this point.” Aziraphale looked pointedly at the snake, who looked back at him and hissed. Newt could have sworn the hiss sounded like “Am not.”

“Yes you are. I know I radiate enough heavenly warmth that you are probably warmer than you've been in weeks. Now come on my dear, we promised Anathema and Newt that we would take them to breakfast, and we can not go out with you in this state.” And he added with a pout and puppy dog eyes that he knew the demon could never resist, “I'm hungry.”

The golden snake eyes held the angelic blue eyes in a wordless standoff. The snake, inevitably, broke first. Crowley had never been able to refuse Aziraphale anything for long. Another hiss which sounded remarkably like “Fine” to Newt’s ears.

Aziraphale stood up and extended his arm to the coffee table so the snake could slither onto it. But the snake didn't move.

“Really, Crowley, you stubborn serpent, you are being ridiculous.” Aziraphale chided, but the transformation had already begun. The serpent coiled around the angel transformed into a demon coiled around the angel. Crowley’s face was still nuzzled into Aziraphale's neck, his chest against the angel’s back, with one arm wrapped around his shoulders and the other around his chest. One leg was wrapped around Aziraphale's middle and the other long limb was twisted around Aziraphale's leg.

Newt flopped on the couch, staring unabashedly opened-mouthed at the sight.

“Anthony... Anthony is a snake?” Newt managed to stutter out.

“Serpent of Eden, in the flesh.” Crowley provided with smirk. Newt’s human brain was completely short circuiting at this point.

Anathema began to wonder to herself if it would be too forward in this budding friendship to ask for demonic snake venom for her birthday.

Aziraphale glared at Crowley, unaffected by the change of weight distribution on his back. Crowley smiled a toothy, oh so innocent smile at Aziraphale, all of his limbs tightening their grips on his perch.

“So, breakfast?” Crowley asked of the group. “I’m thinking Dishoom.”

“Are we really doing this?” Asked Aziraphale with a glare.

“You know, it is record breaking temperatures out there Crowley, you're probably going to want to put on a coat or something.” Anathema offered. Aziraphale's eyes were full of thanks to her.

But Crowley only shook his head. “Angel’s warmer than any coat.” He nuzzled his face in Aziraphale's neck and tightened his grip again.

“Fine. I'm not going hungry, nor am I going to allow our guests to go hungry, because you're being stubborn.” He straightened his already perfect posture, tugged on his mussed waistcoat, and headed towards the door. “But if no taxi will take us and the restaurant refuses to serve us, it will be all your fault.”

Crowley grinned in absolute triumph. “Oh, somehow I don't think any of that will be a problem.” He quietly snapped his fingers.

Aziraphale sighed, resigned. “Anathema, can you grab our coats from the coat rack, we will need them later, and Newt, can you hail us a taxi?”

This was going to be an interesting breakfast.

#good omens #ineffable husbands #crowley #aziraphale #anathema device #newton pulsifer #crowley is a snake #good omens fanfiction

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contre-qui-rose · 5 years

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this is a blumenbuddies original, folks

They make it a week before this whole –

This thing that they’ve torn themselves into.

Forced their way in, lions in a nest of vipers, inconceivably different even if Bren – Caleb – whoever the fuck he is now, tells them that they are welcome because they aren’t, not really, she isn’t an idiot.

She can see the look on the half-orc’s face when he thinks she isn’t looking.

Jokes on him, though, because she’s always fucking looking.

But –

They make it a week, her and Eodwulf, before things start to collapse.

To be fair to herself (even if she doesn’t deserve even that) things were falling apart from the instant that Firbolg had touched her and told her to breathe, because –

How the hell is she supposed to breathe when her lungs are crumbling into dust from the inside out.

They had just been –

On a mission, like usual. To kill some upstarts making a much of things in the dynasty, making a impact in the war the He needed erased, but they had fought back, those upstarts, they had defeated them, and then Bren –

They hadn’t recognized him. His hair was long, now.

He looked alive.

Not – empty and precariously perched on the ledge between life and death.

They had lost, that fight, and she had been about to activate the failsafe, and teleport her and Wulf out of there, and then –

She knew, on some intrinsic level, that her memories weren’t all there. It’s easy to figure out, when she has month long gaps in between missions, impressions that don’t line up and slide away when she tries to focus on them.

It’s different, though, knowing that and facing it. When divine light rips through her mind and tears the walls away, and she’s left shaking on the floor of this stupid house, in this stupid country, forcibly confronted with the fact that she hasn’t been herself in sixteen years.

She killed her parents.

She’s killed so many people, since then, but they were the only people she knew and loved and poisoned anyways.

She fed them their deaths, and watched them die.

Poison drips from her hands.

She clenches her fist a little tighter in her hair, pulling at the strands, and scrambles back against the wall as she hears the sound of footsteps outside.

They pass without opening the door of the linen closet she’s crawled into.

She isn’t sure why she’s in here. She had been –

With Wulf, maybe, if that memory isn’t a lie, and they had been reading in the garden on top of the tower with the firbolg and he had said something, about –

Plants, she thinks. Something innocuous, but –

She had blinked, and she had been not running but walking with purpose, and then she had blinked again and she had been in here, hands clenched tight in her hair as she rocked in the darkness and warmth and softness of the linen closet and tried not to let her keening cries move beyond the dark and alert someone that she’s in here.

She rocks back, and her spine hits the wall and sends a shock through her body that feels like clarity, almost, so she does it again, and again, and then stops when she hears the footsteps returning outside.

There’s – someone outside the door, and she doesn’t know who it is, and if she tried to speak right now Common is out of her grasp, and there is someone there –

“Astrid?”

It’s Bren’s voice.

Fuck.

She hums, and scoots away from the wall, closer to the door.

She doesn’t trust new Bren. Doesn’t trust that this isn’t – some test, by Master Ikithon, some strain at her loyalties while she’s really asleep at the cottage. It would explain – a lot.

Explain how nothing feels real, even the pain from her hands scratching at her arms.

Explain how she feels like she’s wrapped in blankets too tight, too sweltering, wrapped up and slowly boiling alive.

“It’s Bren. Are you alright? Eodwulf said that you ran.”

Zemnian.

Ikithon doesn’t –

He doesn’t like it when they speak it, because it ties them to their past and they need to be free for their futures.

She still speaks it alone, with Wulf, but –

A point in this being real, despite all evidence to the contrary.

“Ja,” she gets out, and winces at the ripples of pain that sends through her throat.

She must make a noise then, some exhalation of pain that clues him in to something being wrong, because his voice responds, “Astrid? I’m going to open the door, okay?”

She flinches back, as the door swings open, and then peels her eyes open despite the pain that the light makes in her head to glare, wordless, at Bren’s – stupid face.

Stupid, stupid, face.

He kneels down, next to her, and shuts the door slightly, just enough so that it’s darker and she’s not still squinting.

He holds his hand out, not touching her, not yet – he and the other people he’s tied himself to, now, they keep talking to her about how she’s allowed to say no to things she doesn’t want. How nobody will touch her unless she wants it. How –

They aren’t keeping her here.

If she wanted to leave, she could.

Part of her does.

Part of her wants to run, and hide, and ignore how she’s shattering in slow motion.

The larger part of her wants to stay here forever and break.

She nods, at Bren’s questioning look, and his hand ghosts over her own before coming up, palm out, to rest against her forehead.

He hisses, and pulls his hand back before reaching down to feel at her wrist, two fingers over her pulse point as she stares at him, heart rabbit-quick from whatever anxiety forced her into the closet.

“Scheisse. Alright, let’s – are you okay to move? You have a fever.”

Oh.

That would explain why she feels like she’s burning.

His hands take hers as she silently asks for help up, and as she blinks – she’s vertical, vision greying out at a pang of dizziness washes through her, and then she’s swaying and falling and with another blink she’s on the ground again, head between her knees as she tries to breathe.

Fuck.

No, seriously, fuck.

She doesn’t look up, but she can hear the dull clink of copper wire as Bren twists it around his hands and casts message.

“Caduceus, can you and Wulf come down – Astrid is sick, I believe.”

There’s a pause, and then he whispers, “Ah.”

It’s not a good sound, she feels.

“Jester, can you meet me by the linen closet? I’m in need of some assistance.” He recasts the spell, and without a reply she can now here another set of footsteps echoing on the wooden floors of the house.

She doesn’t – Jester is nice.

(She had been prepared to kill her.)

Weird, maybe, but not any weirder than Bren and her and Wulf, before. Nice.

Good, maybe, for all that he definition of good is skewed.

Kind.

The door creaks open again, and she presses her eyes closed against the light sending daggers through her headache.

Jester’s voice, for once, isn’t the usual loud babble that she’s come to expect out of the tiefling. Instead, it’s quieter, softer around the consonants, less brash and more – concerned, maybe.

It’s confusing.

Bren had seemed fine, when she had her eyes open, but maybe he’s – maybe he’s sick, too? And that’s why she’s concerned.

There’s a tap against her knuckles, Bren’s fingers, smooth where there should be roughness because she remembers when he managed to burn his fingertips badly enough that they scarred over smooth, at the cottage, before.

She blinks her eyes open, and the light is dim again. Jester’s eyes glint, in the remaining light, and she can just track the motion of her tail sweeping the air behind her.

“Astrid, is it okay if I touch you? I want to try and cast lesser restoration, just to see if that makes you not-sick anymore.”

Jester wasn’t the one who cast that first greater restoration on her. That was caduceus – soft furred hands so different from the rough healing she’s received before – but Jester’s cast it on her since, to make sure any remnants of Ikithon’s influence was burned away from her mind.

It’s too warm in here.

She’s burning.

But Jester’s hands, when she nods, feel like ice against her forehead, and she leans into it.

There’s a pulse of divine energy, green and golden and light, within her, but after a moment it fizzles out and dissipates to emptiness, and she whines in the back of her throat.

Jester’s hand leaves her forehead, and she hums, unhappily.

“I don’t think that worked. I don’t – shit.”

“Caduceus said Wulf was sick too – maybe just – the stress, from the memories falling? I am not a healer, Jester, I do not know how this works.”

It’s too dark in here, for a second, and she forces her eyes open, staring at the glowing eyes of Frumpkin, Bren’s weird magic cat.

The cat’s magic feels fey.

Comforting, in a sense. Reminds her of the forests surrounding Blumenthal.

Reminds her of –

Tiny, buried crescent moon pendants that She and Wulf and Bren had dug up in the woods, on Midsummer, that had turned to dust and decay in her hands when she tried to wear them, old and corrupted from years of hiding in the dirt.

Where’s –

Wulf. She needs –

She forces her eyes open, again, from where they had fallen closed, and stares up at Bren and Jester, talking about something she doesn’t care to pay attention to because it’s in Common and if it’s in Common it’s probably not important.

Tries to get words, to form actual coherency, in her mouth, and feels as they die in her throat.

It’s not usually her issue, not-talking, because she’s good at talking, good at twisting her words to spin confessions out of traitors, good at using them like the poison the swims through her veins, good at using them to whisper apologies to people she’s killed late at night when she knows no one’s listening except their ghosts.

But now – she’s exhausted, and her throat hurts, and her head hurts, and everything hurts, and it’s too dark and too bright and she’s hot, burning, and words are ashes.

She lifts her aching hands, instead, bright sparks of pain drifting where Ikithon had broken them years and years and years ago and they had healed wrong, that she’s been ignoring for sixteen years but seems overwhelmingly present now.

She taps Bren’s foot, and he glances down.

“Wulf,” she signs, clumsy and out of practice.

Then, “Bed. Safe.”

Bren’s eyes, in the dim light of this closet, are too unlit for her to read the expressions that don’t cross his features, but she knows he understands.

“We can get you to Eodwulf, Astrid, and to Bed. Will you let me help you?”

Oh.

Jester knows sign.

That’s nice, she thinks, belatedly, as she nods and Jester’s arms come around her shoulders, helping her up and steadying her as she blinks darkness out of her vision.

The hallway feels like both an eternity and a split second. The stairs – she blinks, on the first step, and by the time she blinks again Jester’s holding her entirely as she nearly falls, feet tripping over one of the roots from the garden above that she hadn’t thought to step over.

Jester carries her the rest of the way to Bren’s room, the man in question hovering a worried three steps behind.

To her own fragmented understanding, the mattresses that they’ve shoved into Bren’s room to make a spot for the two of them were begged off of one of the drow that they seem to be friends with. There aren’t any bed frames, but she’s not –

She hasn’t slept consistently on a bed in years.

(Weapons don’t need comfort.)

So even just this, the pair of mattresses that she and Wulf now sleep curled up together on, with blankets and pillows that are softer than anything she’s touched in years –

That is one of the things that make her more certain that this is reality.

Because if this was a test – Ikithon wouldn’t give her comfort.

Or maybe he would.

She doesn’t really know him.

Eodwulf is already on the bed, curled in a tight ball while Caduceus hums something low and fey-sounding in the corner, and she half-scrambles, half-drops out of Jester’s arms as soon as she’s close enough, moving towards his shaking form while ignoring the pain that the motion sends through her head.

He doesn’t feel warm, when she lays her hand against his forehead, but then again she feels like she’s radiating heat, so that isn’t reassuring.

She loses time.

She never was the one with a head for numbers and constants.

That had always been Bren. She’s more likely to focus on something while time drifts out of her reach, minutes passing into hours without her notice.

Working without him, after he had broken, had for the few months until Eodwulf managed to keep time, been – stressful, to say the least.

Showing up late to briefings because she didn’t know what time it was wasn’t an excuse.

(There are scars, alongside her broken fingers, that remind her of that.)

When she –

She blinks, and there’s a damp cloth over her eyes, cold and soft and dark, and it feels nice, overwhelmingly so, and it’s another point in favor of this being reality, however terrified that makes her feel, because Ikithon doesn’t know nice.

He is not kind, not good, not right.

She sleeps.

And when she sleeps –

She dreams.

Light shines through dark canopies and sends shadow shapes streaming against leaf-ridden ground.

She’s running.

Not out of fear, or to escape, but she’s running towards something, bright and brilliant in the distance.

Her feet skid to a stop as she stares up as a tree, massive and scraping its way towards the sky.

There are flames licking at her feet, but she doesn’t feel them as she starts to climb.

The stars are beautiful.

And then, as she blinks, they’re gone.

Bren makes her cookies, burnt but still edible, in the kitchen of this place that he lives, now, and she eats them, and watches as they crumble to mold and mushrooms and rot in her hands.

She makes bread with unsteady hands, and watches as Jester eats it, and grins at her, and grins wider as blood starts to weep from her eyes and she falls seizing and dying to the floor.

Caduceus makes her food, and she doesn’t eat it, because she didn’t make it which means she can’t trust it, but she touches the spoon, anyways, when he offers her a taste, and she watches as her poison spreads out and contaminates everything and she lives weeks in a house of dead bodies.

She feels –

Not better, when she wakes up.

Less sick, she thinks, but more unsettled, memories creeping in at the edges of the shreds she’s stitched together to create a self.

Sitting up takes more effort than it should, but it’s accomplished with only the faintest nauseu pulling at her stomach, and that’s good enough for her.

It’s dark outside. Well –

It’s always dark, here.

Not a good indicator of anything.

Wulf is still here, in between her and the wall, still sleeping, brow relaxed.

Bren isn’t, though, and that – she wants him to be here.

Wants him to be safe.

She doesn’t trust this here, this place, but she –

He left them.

Not really, but he did, but she still trusts him, even though that’s probably a bad idea.

But he’s not here.

She’d switched over from components to a focus years ago, after half of her components had burned away in an explosion that had left her just barely alive and she’d had to fight off waves of guards with only cantrips. Now, she uses the gem inset in the bracelet she wears on her left wrist.

It’s just quartz. Not – anything rarer, she would have given over to Ikithon, for experiments and components and for the crystals that he was still trying to force work in their arms, before he gave up.

She hates having a crystal that close to her skin, but the alternative, of not having her magic, is worse.

If she thinks, harder than just a passing perusal, she gets flashes of memory of the last few hours-days, snippets of her screaming in hoarse Zemnian while Bren holds her and burns her – that isn’t realy.

She knows – that isn’t real. Shouldn’t mention that.

There’s another, that’s calmer, where she’s burning but there’s ice, too, pressing into her and being carefully fed to her by soft unscarred hands. Another memory, where she’s bleary and half awake and shaking with something, fever and memories alike, while Bren’s hands hold onto her wrist and a wave of divine energy washes through her without fixing anything.

Another, where she chokes on the poison that spills from her like a wave.

That one probably isn’t real.

Hopefully, at least. She doesn’t want to kill Bren’s friends.

She raises her wrist, weakly, and musters enough magic to cast message, pointing her fist towards the direction of the kitchen.

“Where are you,” she half-whispers, half-thinks, and then lets the magic subside as she blinks darkness out of her vision.

She doesn’t get a response.

Grits her teeth.

Tries again, this time towards the garden, and is rewarded with a panicky sounding, “Scheisse – One moment.”

He must run down the stairs, because he enters the door less than a minute later, breath wheezing on the exhale.

She frowns, and points at him and then the bed.

He rolls his eyes and sinks down onto the edge of the mattress, and she carefully moves aching limbs over to sit next to him.

She leans her head against his shoulder, carefully – (poison, poison, poison, her mind whispers. You’ll kill him, he’ll die just like your parents, you’ll watch him bleed and fall – shut up.) and hums, something sweet and lilting from a lifetime ago.

He hums back, only slightly off-pitch.

“How long –“ she gets out, and then stops.

Good enough.

“A couple of days. You guys were – Caduceus says that he thinks the stress of the memories coming free, just tanked it’s way through any semblance you had of an immune system.”

She glances up, and Beauregard’s leaning against the door, eyes dark from messed makeup and hair greasy.

Not to be unkind. It’s a look.

(She hadn’t noticed her come in. She hadn’t – anyone she doesn’t know pings on her awareness like a needle dropped on tiles. The fact that she hadn’t noticed her presence means something that she’s not sure she likes.)

“Ah,” she mouths, and leans a little harder against Bren’s shoulder.

Listens to him breathe, for a long silent moment.

She’s glad he didn’t get sick.

All three of them are too skinny, but he –

She worries.

She missed him, for so many years, when he had been broken and then had just been lost.

His hand finds hers.

“How about we get you some food, ja? And some for Wulf, once he wakes up.”

She – hesitates.

Taps him three times, across the knuckles, and he nods.

“I’ll let Caduceus know. We can probably move a chair into the kitchen, so that you can watch.”

Hums, again.

Okay.

That’s –

Okay.

Beauregard helps her to the kitchen, and kindly says nothing when she flinches, violently, at noise of the street outside when Jester pours in through the front door, arms laden with paints and a large sketchbook.

The food, that Caduceus lets her watch him make, is good.

Eodwulf wakes up, halfway through eating, and devours an entire bowl of oatmeal while the other’s watch in half-awe, half-disgust.

She falls firmly on the side of disgust. Oatmeal is bad.

She has a nightmare, that night, about burning, but when she wakes up, the room is chilled, and Eodwulf is next to her, and Bren is asleep against her thigh after she had practically forced him into the bed nest.

She falls asleep again, shortly after, and dreams of trees.

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